Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable?

Now my barb has a big two handed skorn and i'm doing 146 k damage with about 50% CC and 400 CD,,, he seems to do well under most situations with resists around the 500 level.
I'm leveling another barb to see if dual wield might be an option and maybe a weapon/ shield tanking type barb.
I'm wondering what you guys think of the various options and what you use. And what do the top damage barbs strive for, crit damage, crit chance, attack speed, strength, etc.
I've always been a duel wield barb dating back to D2 but now i'm not sure if that is the consensus best.
By the way my main damage skills are cleave, whirlwind, siesmic slam, with a dose od wrath of the berzerker. Many use bash or frenzy its just that cleave works better for me.
And finally just how tanky could a barb be,,,, reduced damage from elites, dodge, resists, etc..... no one seems to take the party tank role anymore... thanks alot!

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

Each type of weapon has its' role. Big two handers are slow, but can hit really hard. Seismic slam, and Hammer of the Ancients builds might favor the Skorn for the chance to one-hit-crit most monsters. Since they lack speed, you'll need to be pretty tanky to survive in between hits. Best suited for weak content or single enemies.

Sword & shield is good for tank builds that use rend, but can also be good for HotA builds that need more survivability. The 15% damage bonus for swords typically isn't as good as the 10% crit bonus from axes/maces.

Dual-wielding is (IMO) the best weapon set up for any build. Especially builds centered around ww and sprint, because you can take advantage of only using a high dps main hand with a lower dps "stat stick" in the off hand.

Top DPS barbs usually go for a 1200+ dps Echoing Fury with a socket, strength, and crit damage, and have a high DPS sword off hand with high crit, a socket, and life leech. Also if you're going the ww/nado route (aka highest potential damage of any class) then you'll want to hit at least 2 attacks/second, 45%+ crit chance, 400%+ crit damage, and as much strength as you can get (2000+).

Party "tank barbs" don't really exist anymore because with a high enough dps and a moderate amount of leech (4-5%) you can out heal just about anything. Building a decent ww/nado barb is just as cheap as building a tank barb now too.

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

Imo, for very high end stuff, dual wielding is better. Skorn is great for midrange and on and can even jump into the high end (moldran barb, iirc, finds around 6 legendaries/hour on MP10 using a skorn). What I mean is, even if, in theory, dual wield beats skorn, you can do anything with a good skorn (stuck 33% IAS on gear and you're good to go).

As a side not, some people use a nice MH axe/mace and a .24 or .25 APS EF on the off-hand,

I don't see myself using a shield, since spirit runeword was left on D2... :cloud9: Also, you can have high enough survivability with a might belt with LS, rend and or bloodthirst. Sometimes you can do it with 3% LS. In the end of the day, you just end up needing more IAS on the rest of the gear and losing DPS for a EHP you don't really need...

Each type of weapon has its' role. Big two handers are slow, but can hit really hard. Seismic slam, and Hammer of the Ancients builds might favor the Skorn for the chance to one-hit-crit most monsters. Since they lack speed, you'll need to be pretty tanky to survive in between hits. Best suited for weak content or single enemies.

Sword & shield is good for tank builds that use rend, but can also be good for HotA builds that need more survivability. The 15% damage bonus for swords typically isn't as good as the 10% crit bonus from axes/maces.

Dual-wielding is (IMO) the best weapon set up for any build. Especially builds centered around ww and sprint, because you can take advantage of only using a high dps main hand with a lower dps "stat stick" in the off hand.

Top DPS barbs usually go for a 1200+ dps Echoing Fury with a socket, strength, and crit damage, and have a high DPS sword off hand with high crit, a socket, and life leech. Also if you're going the ww/nado route (aka highest potential damage of any class) then you'll want to hit at least 2 attacks/second, 45%+ crit chance, 400%+ crit damage, and as much strength as you can get (2000+).

Party "tank barbs" don't really exist anymore because with a high enough dps and a moderate amount of leech (4-5%) you can out heal just about anything. Building a decent ww/nado barb is just as cheap as building a tank barb now too.

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Dont use a EF in mainhand because you want a high damage range( the small numbers under the big dps number ) most of the time you are better off without it.

Each type of weapon has its' role. Big two handers are slow, but can hit really hard. Seismic slam, and Hammer of the Ancients builds might favor the Skorn for the chance to one-hit-crit most monsters. Since they lack speed, you'll need to be pretty tanky to survive in between hits. Best suited for weak content or single enemies.

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Actually, most barbs (especially 2 handers) work better against large groups than small ones. More lifesteal, more fury, more overpower spam.

Actually, most barbs (especially 2 handers) work better against large groups than small ones. More lifesteal, more fury, more overpower spam.

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Barbs work better against everything, haha. After trying more builds out I would agree that two hander builds actually do work well with "large mobs" like the ones that can now be seen outside of act 3. When I originally wrote that though, it was pre 1.0.8, and I had yet to see anyone using a two-hander build that had remotely the same kill speed against mobs as a dual wielder with similar/less DPS.

I have since experimented with a big skorn for HotA and it's pretty ridiculous how big some of the crit numbers can be. It is still, however, horrendously slow. I had a hard time surviving some of the more "kitey" elites that make you chase them everywhere. If I could get in a hit or two, then I could out heal most damage. Combining it with skills like ground stomp, wrenching smash, would allow you to overcome that every 12 seconds or so, but you would have to sacrifice something like rend or overpower.

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

Rend - Ravage + ls for passive recovery. If I die it's either lag, trapped on a HIGH damage zone (arcane turret, 6+ plagued), or I'm NOT fighting a large group, and am instead fighting a small number of hard enemies.

If they still wanna run no problem - go run in that horde and get stuck while I spam instant cast overpowers. ^^

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

two hands all the way and use IAS gear to compensate and running a WW build u rush through everything really with decent gear. Its ridicilous how efficent that really is since its no problem keeping fury at max almost at all times now with the insane huge density mobs.

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

Sword and Board here and darn proud of it.

SnB is very under rated. I've played my barb with both Dual wield and Skorn and I much prefer SnB. Most players think that a shield is for better survivability at the cost of DPS. Wrong. SnB has lots of DPS as well.

The build I play is called the revenger, revenge, rend and overpower. The primary killing skill is revenge. You might think that revenge is weak compared to HotA or WW/sprint. revenge boasts only 220% damage versus HotA's 325% for a start. But the secret is in the buffs.
The revenger does not need constant fury generation to run. revenge and over power are free to cast so you only need fury to use rend and WotB.
As you don't need to generate huge amounts of fury, you can choose the better buffs. battle rage/marauders rage (30% instead of 15%) and Brawler as an example.
As you can't run permaWotB, you use WotB/insanity which boosts your DPS to massive levels for 10 seconds which is usually long enough to melt any elite pack.

SnB can run WW and HotA as well and does it very well. If you have a shield with critical hit chance then fury generation can be very easy. I run 59% cc on my barb with a Sword, plus another 3% from rage and 10% from overpower.

The bottom line is that my SnB barb can solo MP10 game play either in HotA or revenger mode. Killing speed is a bit slower in WW mode but it's still doable. He buffs to about 340k dps in game (not counting WotB) and is highly survivable.

SnB is very under rated. I've played my barb with both Dual wield and Skorn and I much prefer SnB. Most players think that a shield is for better survivability at the cost of DPS. Wrong. SnB has lots of DPS as well.

The build I play is called the revenger, revenge, rend and overpower. The primary killing skill is revenge. You might think that revenge is weak compared to HotA or WW/sprint. revenge boasts only 220% damage versus HotA's 325% for a start. But the secret is in the buffs.
The revenger does not need constant fury generation to run. revenge and over power are free to cast so you only need fury to use rend and WotB.
As you don't need to generate huge amounts of fury, you can choose the better buffs. battle rage/marauders rage (30% instead of 15%) and Brawler as an example.
As you can't run permaWotB, you use WotB/insanity which boosts your DPS to massive levels for 10 seconds which is usually long enough to melt any elite pack.

SnB can run WW and HotA as well and does it very well. If you have a shield with critical hit chance then fury generation can be very easy. I run 59% cc on my barb with a Sword, plus another 3% from rage and 10% from overpower.

The bottom line is that my SnB barb can solo MP10 game play either in HotA or revenger mode. Killing speed is a bit slower in WW mode but it's still doable. He buffs to about 340k dps in game (not counting WotB) and is highly survivable.

I have to admit I have always fallen into the 'No SnB' camp in D3. I tried it very early on and just couldn't see how it was comparable to dual wielding. Your build is impressive though, and the fact that it IS SnB and thus relatively unique just from that standpoint is great! Cheers!

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

For the lulz, I tried it out with one of my old dual wield weapons and a SS I keep in case MP 10 wrecks my face too badly.

Surprisingly, my DPS only dropped 20% compared to a Skorn (my one hander also did about 20% less DPS). Naturally EHP goes way up with a shield. I still like HotA, but that was much better than I was expecting for sure. With a better one hander (with some LS) I could see this working.

Re: Two hand or one hand weapons? which is better and why? and is sword/shield doable

I play mostly a Trashfarm Build. I use the ww / sprint build with rend as primary skill and a Skorn for high crit rends.
With this build I can play mp10 very fast, by killing most of the trash with one Rend.
For farming demonic essences, I use two onehand weapons (mace with high average damage as main and EF as offhand) and hota instead of rend at mp6.